Is premium all-day dining worth it?

Editor's note: Justin Dietz is a Register correspondent representing Fun Food Blog at cpfoodblog.com and @funfoodblog on X. This feature is a question-and-answer on dining at Cedar Point. Q: My girlfriend and I are debating about buying the premium all-day dining plan at Cedar Point for our trip in June. Is it worth it? — Alex B. A: The premium all-day dining plan at Cedar Point allows guests to receive an entree plus side or a snack every 90 minutes. This means your girlfriend and you can: • Share a burger and onion rings from Frontier Inn for lunch • Ride a couple of rides • Grab another meal to share from Miss Keat's burrito bowls, a pretzel for a snack, a chicken tender meal from The Corral or even a pizza from Hugo's. Having the flexibility to eat every 90 minutes is a huge benefit. If you start by grabbing breakfast at the Grand Pavilion right when it opens at 9 a.m. for early entry, or 10 a.m . for regular-day guests, this means, by waiting every 90 minutes, guests can easily get in five to six meals. If guests were to purchase five meals on their own, the total for the day could easily approach $100. The benefit of the premium all-day dining plan versus a standard all-day dining plan is that it includes the drink plan plus the option to substitute snacks in place of an entrée and side. For the $45.99 price point, the premium dining plan option makes sense for the food and drinks. Where the premium dining plan falls short is in the snack category. Snack options are pretty sparing with very few options available. When guests consider that many of the locations are not yet open for the season, those options diminish even further. Currently, at the time of this writing, the 2024 dining plan list only shows six places open for snacks. Then when you consider what options are offered, the snacks are not the reason to consider the premium dining plan, as the items are very limited. If Cedar Point wants to get serious about selling more premium dining plans, then it needs to make the snack options more enticing. For example, an order of fries from Coasters Diner or The Corral normally costs $6.99 and are both snack-eligible items. Yet for guests visiting BackBeatQue, none of the $6.99 desserts are included as a snack plan item. Same goes for Hugo's, which offers a cookie at the same price point and is not eligible as a snack item. Even if they allowed guests to swap one of their entrees and sides for an elephant ear or funnel cake once a day, the value of the premium all-day dining plan becomes all the more enticing. Enjoy your visit. If you have a reader question you would like us to answer about visiting Cedar Point, please send them in via our contact form, cpfoodblog.com/contact.